The scandals at charter schools keep happening, and no one seems to care.
Here is the latest: officials at a Cleveland charter accused of stealing $1.8 million.
It happens because charters are deregulated and unsupervised. Deregulation invites plunder and fraud.
Isn’t that what we learned when Wall Street nearly collapsed the economy in 2008? Isn’t that what we learned from the Madoff scandal?
Charter defenders will send an article about a principal who pocketed $2,000 in loose change.
But I defy them to find an example of a public school where the people in charge wrote themselves checks for nearly $2 million.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Theft of hundreds of thousands – or millions of dollars – is terrible, whether it occurs in a district, or a charter, or a union. Here’s a disclosure from April 22 that a local teachers union official stole at least $800K.
Of course people care about theft – whether by a district official, a union official official.
http://auburnpub.com/news/local/auburn-teachers-association-ex-president-misappropriated-k/article_d690aae8-fe89-5a56-84df-dd3c20c4d242.html
April 22, 2013 5:17 pm • The Citizen staff
(18) Comments
Related Documents
ATA letter to members
The Auburn Teachers Association on Monday disclosed to its membership that its former president — the late Sally Jo Widmer — misappropriated at least $800,000 in union funds for personal expenses such as gambling and trips over a period of several years.
Cheryl Miskell, who became ATA president in July, told the membership of the findings of a forensic review of union finances that began in November — after Widmer’s death — when the new leadership team discovered irregularities in the process of taking over fiscal responsibilities. The local union leaders brought in the state affiliate — New York State United Teachers — to assist in the review.
Miskell delivered the findings to the Auburn Police Department on Monday. Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann has also been notified of the situation. No charges have been filed.
Widmer was ATA president for more than three decades, only stepping down from that role last summer. She died Nov. 7 at the age of 63. Auburn High School was closed for a day so staff could attend memorial services.
Miskell said the review discovered $800,000 in dues was misappropriated between 2006 and the fall of 2012.
“It appears that money earmarked for the Association was instead used for meals, gasoline, trips, gambling, clothing, grocery shopping — and for cash advances,” she wrote to the membership. “NYSUT is still in the process of disentangling the Association’s finances. Because some old financial records are unavailable, we may never know the full extent of the misappropriations.”
Miskell said the ATA is bonded so it should be able to recoup some of the lost funds through its insurance carrier. She said at this point, the evidence does not point to any person other than Widmer as having misused union dues.
Miskell said the union leadership is putting stronger financial controls in place as a result of the investigation.
“We feel a strong sense of resolve that nothing like this should ever happen again,” she wrote.
“In hindsight, all of us should have been more vigilant and insisted on stronger and clearer checks and balances. In a very real way, we were also victimized by what, in the end, turned out to be a massive fraud.”
On Tuesday, Auburn Enlarged City School District Superintendent Constance Evelyn issued a statement in reaction to the news.
“While union dues are paid by each of the individual union members from their own money, and not by District funds, we know that a loss of this proportion to the Association will be disheartening to a large and critical segment of our staff,” she said.
The district offered its assistance to the union and authorities to help with the continued investigation.
“We trust that the Association and NYSUT will take the necessary steps to remedy this situation and put the funds they collect from their members on a sound financial footing going forward,” Evelyn said.
Diane: “But I defy them to find an example of a public school where the people in charge wrote themselves checks for nearly $2 million.”
Joe: “The Auburn Teachers Association on Monday disclosed to its membership that its former president — the late Sally Jo Widmer — misappropriated at least $800,000 in UNION FUNDS for personal expenses such as gambling and trips over a period of several years.”
Irrelevant Joe. Any examples where “the people in charge wrote themselves checks” like Diane asked for?
mathcs – please see the Seattle example – possibly as much as $2.8 million misappropriated – with at least some of that going to district employees who set up “dummy corporations”.
Does this bother you, or does it only bother you when charter people misappropriate public dollars?
Joe, this question is not connected to your previous comment. Just thought I’d ask it here. Have you ever taught public school? Just curious.
Yes, I did, M. I received awards from parents, students and professional groups for work as an inner city public school teacher and administrator. Helped start and worked for seven years at a K-12 innovative, progressive urban district public school (no admissions tests) Helped start and worked for several years in innovative grades 7-12 public school (no admissions tests).
Also Have been asked a number of times by Minneapolis and St. Paul Federation of Teachers to meet with local teachers to help them develop plans for new innovative public schools. Did so as a volunteer.
One of our current projects is to work with inner city district & charter educators to help increase number of low income, inner city students taking some form of dual (high school college credit) courses.
All 3 of our kids attended St. Paul, Mn public schools k-12. Older daughter currently teaching in St. Paul Public Schools. Wife recently retired after 35+ years teaching in St. Paul
Write a weekly column for newspapers reaching more than 600,000 people.
http://www.hometownsource.com
Joe, how many years did you teach? Was it in a traditional public school, or charter, or both?
Joe, charters are legalized theft. Also, it is far easier to conceal your theft of money by funneling to yourself in multiple ways. Why would you defend any individual being able to take in public tax money to increase their fortune?
Every person who works in a public school takes public money. Did you work in a public school? If so, you received public money.
My wife recently retired after is 36 year veteran of urban public schools. I’m a veteran of 14 years in public schools – then I’ve done other things (like help bring millions to other public school systems, producing a variety of gains). We who work in public schools do it partially to help the kids, and partially so we can earn a living.
A few people are in public education primarily to make money. Most aren’t.
Whatever school you work in you obviously are not responsible for teaching or interacting with children since you have been defending failure since this morning. What a cushy job….tons of free time.
Joe, Detroit schools used to have a bi g variety of schools to attend. Now, the district is becoming smaller with less variety. It had more opportunities than just a school one had to test into.
Did (does) Detroit allow for open enrollment? Are (were) there public progressive, Montessori, or Waldorf schools? All of the progrssive, Montessori, and Waldrf schools in my town are private schools.
From Seattle newspaper, Dec 2012 (theft from Seattle Public schools may be more $2.8 million) Again, no one can be happy about this kind of thing, whether it is a district a charter or a union.
http://www.seattlepi.com/mount-rainier/article/Figures-in-Seattle-schools-scandal-face-33-new-4105876.php
The article reads in part, “The charges arise from a contracting scandal that cost the district superintendent her job…
“State auditors examining the small-business development program found that $1.5 million in expenditures were questionable and that $280,000 was paid for work that wasn’t done or didn’t benefit Seattle Public Schools.
This fall auditors said in a new report that they may have turned up $1.3 million more that may have been spent incorrectly.”
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/mount-rainier/article/Figures-in-Seattle-schools-scandal-face-33-new-4105876.php#ixzz2S9QU8W4o
Joe, you scour the media to find any hint of scandal in public schools so you can defend the deregulated, unsupervised, unaccountable charter operators. It is sad to see you waste your time defending a sector that is undermining the democratic principle of free public education, doors open to all, where kids do not need to enter a lottery to enter their community schools, and where they cannot be excluded because of their disability status. Give it up, Joe.
No Diane, I don’t have to “scour the media” because people send me things all the time. Also, I don’t defend theft – whether it’s in the district or charter sector. I think it’s wrong and reprehensible, wherever it occurs.
Are you concerned about the theft in Seattle? Are you concerned about the theft in New York?
As to lotteries…There are many district “magnet” schools that use lotteries. There are many magnet schools that exclude students with disabilities who can not pass the standardized tests you criticize.
Do you want to end lotteries at magnet schools? Do you want to end the practice of using standardized tests to determine whether students are allowed to attend district magnets?
I’m opposed to any type of admission test for ANY public school, whether district or charter. And I’ve worked with district, state and federal officials to oppose such tests. Don’t plan to stop challenging loose financial regulations, or admissions tests for schools, where-ever it’s found.
How about you?
There’s some flaw in the reasoning here somewhere, I think. Perhaps it is in the use of the word “free” which seems to me to carry two different meanings in the same grapheme. No school is “free” in the sense that it is created, run, and maintained by the photons coming from the sun. But, of course, you don’t mean that. You mean “free” of additional expenses to the student. Yet your statement strikes me a having a faint aroma of persuasive definition about it. We would all like it if schools could be to each student like the sunlight, just there, and for free, but so much complex work is required to make it so. No social institution is like sunlight.
And then there is the phrase “democratic principal.” I wonder whether a “free public education” is intrinsically a part of the “democratic principal.” Perhaps it is, because for a democracy to function it is not enough just for people to vote, but they need to vote being able to estimate the potential effects of any decision or appropriation they make. Looking ahead would seem to be the essence of prudence and education should enable every member of a self-governing society to make those imaginative leaps.
Then, there is the problem of whether the public school systems actually provide that training in realistic prudence so necessary to a voting populace.
I don’t mean to be deconstructionist, particularly, but just the facts of recent voting in the states and nationally suggest to me that the electorate has not been well served by its education for its civic duties. It seems to me that the tea party movement is an effort by a minority to reintroduce the notion of “good judgement” into voting. Certainly, or at least in my opinion, the passage of Obamacare in the first two years of the President’s first term showed extremely poor judgement on the part of the Democrats who rammed it through without having read the bill. It is showing itself a disaster. Was its passage “democratic”? Yes. Was it good policy? No. So I have to conclude that proper democratic procedure can lead to VERY poor policy decisions.
To defend public schools on the basis of the wording you use to Joe
“It is sad to see you waste your time defending a sector that is undermining the democratic principle of free public education, doors open to all, where kids do not need to enter a lottery to enter their community schools, and where they cannot be excluded because of their disability status” seems to me to raise more questions about your premise than it answers. That phrasing MAY be primarily an appeal to emotion using some of this society’s prime positive words, “free,” “democratic,” “open to all” and so one and so on, rather than a true description of a desired social reality that corresponds to what is required to achieve it. By law the public schools used to do what you describe, but now the money is gone, some of the unpleasant gritty realities have been exposed.
Perhaps education has come to be seen as purely an investment in individual job skills rather than a community building entity in a kind of backlash to the communitarian philosophy which citizens must hold in order to willingly invest in a comprehensive system. Perhaps the Boomer generation and Generation X are really more narcissistic and selfish than they see themselves.
I think these matters have to be argued once again from the ground up and not just simply assumed. Only the sunshine is free. Everything else in our infrastructure is human made. So too with education. And so many in the public education business don’t seem to want to understand philosophically what they are advocating, namely that each of us has a DUTY to support with taxes the entire conception of free education for all. Is providing education a true duty of the member of the civil society, or is it just pragmatic worthwhile prudential policy? If I have a duty to provide education for people outside my family, then I need to be persuaded of that duty. It doesn’t seem self-evident to me.
Harlan — those photons aren’t free.
A district’s magnet school is owned by the district and created by the board and district employees. The charter is owned by the CEO. That is the problem.
So it’s ok for a district board to decide to discriminate against people who can’t pass a standardized test? It’s ok for a district board to say to students with special needs who can’t pass a test, or who may have many talents but doing well on a standardized mutiple choice test – “No, this a public school you may not attend.” That’s ok?
It’s ok to use a lottery to select which students will attend a district public school, but not ok for a charter public school to use a lottery?
Joe — these are great questions that, if taken seriously, can punch through a lot of the rhetoric and slogans and shed more light on what people actually value about public education and how much they value it. So I like those questions. But I don’t think they’re easy to answer. Do you? Should gifted and talented programs be abolished? Should all zoned schools be abolished because they necessarily exclude some students? What practical effects would a policy like that have on education overall? Or is the principle all that matters?
I agree that those are great questions and do much to further the discussion. I think, however, that the answers might well differ for different local conditions. In my town, for example, the gifted and talented program for high school students is for them to take classes at the university. This is a good solution in my town, but other towns would need other solutions.
“Surprise, surprise, surprise!”
Gomer Plye
Amber – are you also concerned about the million dollar theft in Seattle or the $800,000 theft in New York state?
I’m concerned about all misuse of funds allocated for schools. However, when I do a search for reports of misuse of educational funds I find far more stories of misuse in charter schools, which have far less accountability.
Glad to hear we agree on the need of accountability for all.
Our work around the country suggests to me there’s plenty of work to do in terms of accountability for district and charter public schools.
Define accountability and who it applies to? Your purpose here is to defend charters/privitization and bash public schools. It must be tiring to keep defending the Duncan/Obama failing stimulus plan masquerading as reform.
I can say from experience that when we make out our yearly budget for our school, every dollar must be accounted for. Federal $ in one pot, State $ in another. Every $ accounted for, no exceptions.
Glad to hear it, Amber. I hope there are people in your district checking the figures and expenditures, and more than one person has to sign off on checks, so that people can’t do what they (already have pleaded guilty to doing in Seattle) and teacher union officials acknowledge happen in NY or what seems to have happened in Cleveland. We do need to find better ways to protect $.
Joe Nathan, it seems that Diane’s post struck a nerve … or perhaps you feel your livelihood is threatened? You cannot control the narrative on charter schools by pointing out the misdeeds of others.
No, my livelihood is not threatened by criticism of charter public schools.
We work with district and charter public schools, as well as parents and policymakers.
I have no intention of controlling any narrative. Just trying to provide some balance.
So readingexchange, how do you feel about the theft in Seattle, in Cleveland and in New York?
Well, the superintendent was a Broad Academy graduate. Not that we should ever evaluate schools on their students performance…
Valeria Silva, St. Paul (district) superintendent and a graduate of the Broad Institute, has just been named chair of the Council of Great City School’s Board of Directors. She arrived in the United States about 27 years ago, knowing virtually no English. Fascinating person.
http://www.minnpost.com/political-agenda/2013/04/st-paul-superintendent-valeria-silva-gets-national-leadership-role
http://www.minnpost.com/learning-curve/2013/02/valeria-silva-lauded-st-pauls-approach-english-language-learners
Oh, no, a Broadie.
And does the fact that Supt Silva attended the Broad Institute give you enough information to make a judgement?
If Broad is trying to let new ideas stand on their own merits that is fine. If the plan is to infiltrate and disassemble public education, then that is a different story.
Seattle, Cleveland, and New York are just a reflection of the nature of humanity. A few people in their respective districts simply demonstrated an exercise to all of us on the sins of humanity. Greed is human nature. Therefore, measures have to be taken and policy created to help curb said sin. Statistically speaking, financial fraud in public education, especially at the local school level, is few and far between. I’m not defending it, by any means. However, I think its a credit to local policy makers that cases like the above aren’t more widespread throughout our country.
Now, just imagine what will happen in the giant charter expansion, with little over-site (their own hand-appointed “boards”), fewer regulations, etc…It’ll be a cash cow. Leasing land and buildings for one dollar? It would be like opening a restaurant in a strip mall and not having to pay rent. Then, earn revenue by kicking the kid out of your restaurant after the state paid for his order, and you don’t give him his food. He leaves without eating. Simply accept anyone and everyone, then kick out the bad kids after the 20 day head count, hire fewer teachers, keep the profit. Kid now has to go back to his local school where there are fewer resources than before. The reason educators are fighting so hard to prevent this is because we have the gift of foresight. Our problems in education aren’t fixed. They are simply shifted in a for-profit model with little accountability or over site. That doesn’t sound like a formula for fraud? It’s a breeding ground for it. Nothing gets fixed.
You against fraud, Nathan? Good. Buckle up, good sir…its about to become rampant.
This view of the future seems to put little faith in parents or governments. I have more faith.
Here’s more about some of the work we do – helping district & charter public school educators & students learn from eachother. In this case, the project is working with young women who are parents, or who don’t speak English as their first language, or who have not succeeded in traditional secondary schools. We’re helping them take classes in which they will earn college credits. This increases the likelihood that they won’t have to take remedial courses, and that they will graduate from some form of 1, 2 or 4 year higher ed program.
http://www.twincities.com/education/ci_23076316/homeroom-collaborative-effort-gives-high-school-students-better?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com
“You cannot control the narrative on charter schools by pointing out the misdeeds of others.”
I think the technique is called deflecting.
“If you don’t like how the conversation is going, change the topic”.
(Notice how we are NOT discussing 1.8 million dollars of tax payer money?)
Also, notice the repetition technique; continually referring to charters as public schools. (That has been debunked by Diane and others numerous times on this blog and elsewhere.)
“Repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth”
Notice also the reference to “balance”.
This is the trick where you make any reporting of a negative fact about one side seem “unfair” and “unbalanced”. So one must find something equally wrong with the other side and comment on it, even if it is not equivalent or even germane to the current discussion. I believe this debating tactic is refereed to as a false equivalency. It serves to get our attention off the wrong done by one side and get busy defending your own side.
Clever, aren’t they?
To Joe,
Yes.
Bad things do sometimes happen in places other than charter schools.
I am sure we all hate that.
Now, that point conceded, can we be permitted to discuss the original topic of this post?
The 1.8 million dollars of apparently misappropriated tax money? The deregulation that makes this kind of theft easier?
Please.
If you feel the need to continue perhaps you can start a blog with all the other misdeeds of public schools as the topic.
I am sure you will get lots of traffic.
Thank you for your consideration.
In fairness to Joe, Diane did issue a challenge for someone to try to find analogous fraud at non-charter public schools. So maybe Joe’s examples aren’t convincing for various reasons, but he’s not trying to change the conversation. He’s trying to take part in it.
Now, if Diane’s post just called attention to this Cleveland indictment and simply asserted that fraud like this is a direct result of lax oversight of charter schools, and then Joe responded with “but there’s fraud in public school systems, too,” then I could see your point.
This case has been going on for a while.
This school’s (now former) treasurer was convicted in 2012 of fraud in a federal case involving some other charter chains in Ohio.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/05/carl_shye_ohio_charter_school.html
On a related note, I tell people to look at the school closely if they are seeking a non-profit. The school may be organized under a non-profit legal structure but “non profit” can be meaningless as a practical matter if they’re subbing all the essential school functions out to for-profit contractors.
Ohio charters are poorly regulated (there’s a lot of lobbyist capture) and you really need to hire a lawyer to sift through all the various legal entities contained within some of them. These Cleveland cases are an example, where they set up many different entities within “the school” to provide services TO the school.
I still have a democratically-run traditional public school district, and the accounting and legal designations as far as funding are easily explained to the public at a school board meeting. Not so for charters.
Which leads me to another question. Do charters have something akin to a “school board meeting” that the public may attend? We’ve been lucky enough to avoid for-profit “choice” in my rural district, so far, so I am blissfully ignorant on the reality of appointed boards and private companies and “public” schools. I don’t think we have enough children to justify a ROI for a charter chain, thank goodness.
I don’t know what the public hears about charter finances. Are the expenditures “read” or publicly available to people in the these communities at an actual live meeting?
Chiara – Varies from state to state, depending on the state law. I’m in favor (and have worked for) charter laws which require open public meetings for charter boards and public posting of budgets and expenditures. Some states have done this.
It’s a real loss, as far as I’m concerned.
We just had a school board meeting Tuesday on a 19 million dollar building levy, and it was very lively. It’s the third modification to the building plans, because the public was unhappy with the first two. ALL of the public. Not just parents of children who currently attend our public schools.
I am simply not willing to give that up. It’s hugely important to me. The whole community makes decisions on our public schools. I may not always like the decisions “we” make for my children, but I think we would be much poorer without the democratic process.
Also Joe, I think you should know that the Fordham Institute lobby for charters and regularly cited as an authority on charters and they’re out of Ohio.
Ohio has had incredibly lax regulation of charters for 15 years, right in their backyard. The school in this case has been “failing” (to use the language of school reform) since 2004. When do you think charter enthusiasts are going to act to reform THIS school?
http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2013/replication-rural-resistance-reauthorization-and-revamping.html
Charters and charter lobbyists are not self-policing, Joe. They simply
aren’t doing it.
Right now I’m actually attending every school board meeting because I read TFA are expanding into rural districts. I didn’t ask TFA for “help” and I don’t want them replacing our local teachers. We’re fine. Thanks but no thanks!
I’m policing the school reform movement, Joe. I wish I didn’t have to, but they’ve purchased state government so I do.
Chiara, the school isn’t failing-the CEO is making a ton of money. You see? A complete free market success.
I didn’t scour the media, just googled “school district embezzlement” and this was the 2nd hit. http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/02/13/corruption-in-the-bensalem-school-district-leads-to-20-arrests/ (In case you don’t want to do the work of clicking through, the total amount alleged to be embezzled by district officials is $1.5MM).
In case others don’t have time to look for additional examples, let me Google that for you. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=school+district+embezzlement
You can put that alongside the $20 million embezzled by charter operators in Oregon. Or google “charter school scandals”
Sure – just google “school district embezzlement $20 million” and the answer pops right up – http://kdvr.com/2013/02/04/states-5th-largest-school-district-hid-millions-while-cutting-services-to-students/
Common sense and experience tells us that the more attenuated the relationship between the entity writing the checks and the entities cashing the checks, the greater the opportunity for fraud. Because they generally operate with less oversight and more discretion about how to they spend their funds than district schools, it’s not surprising that fraud of this type is more common among operators of charter schools than the city employees who run district schools, who have less opportunity and less motivation to steal.
The big-money fraud in the public education is in special education contracting, medicare reimbursement, and pensions. That fraud happens for the same reasons that it happens at charter schools — lax oversight, lots of discretion, and moral hazard.
Public schools: Money given by government to run. Money is used to run district, salaries, supplies, buildings, etc. no profit taken. Moneys not used saved for when needed. Charters: Money given by government to run. Money used to run school or schools, salaries, supplies, buildings, etc. Profit taken by company or individual off top. That’s the problem, there is a middleman in charters taking tax money as profit with little or no accountability. Just look at our Health system and one can see where the schools are going.
This is what happens when because they are private organizations you cannot get your hands on their internal financial documents. You only have the rights to their IRS tax records. This is how Steve Barr of Green Dot got busted taking $60,000. One part of the Florida “Parent Trigger” proposed law was accountability for charter schools which included transparent financial records. In L.A. I am fairly sure that mayor Villaraigosa’s Partnership for L.A. Schools (PLAS) is disappearing money. They have $74 million in donations. $2.933 million is for computers for students. Marshall Tuck, CEO, bragged about putting $200,000 into computers. You should have seen him choke when I asked in public where the other $2.733 million was. Never got an answer in spite of asking several times in public. When PLAS first took over the complete 40 column wide and 988 column deep budget showed $8,000/student. I asked Marshall Tuck at the meeting where they told the parents they had goofed for almost 5 years on the 7 schools and 8 principals how much they had per student when they took over. He did not answer until the public got on him so much he finally stated $9,000/student. I told him not too bad you got another $1,000/student. Then I asked “Where did it all go?” No answer again. More money yet get rid of teachers, no band, no trade classes, no computers, those that are there run Windows 95, no extra classes. Now where did the money go. LAUSD’s General Counsel, David Holmquist, is now once again breaking the law by not providing another public information request (6250 eq seq.) on the mandatory reporting to LAUSD on the status of the schools and the yearly audits of each PLAS school. This office regularly breaks the law. This is the problem. No accountability and law breaking without any action.
The UNO Chicago situation looks bad to me.
They’re loaded with debt. Each student is carrying something like 12k in new construction debt.
It looks to me like they have to keep growing to service the debt, which is a downward spiral.
I think it’s a very bad sign that they can’t pay their contractors from available assets. There’s a reason the contractors are bailing on the half-built school.
Care to Google UNO, cronyism and PURE?
The UNO charter chain appears to have bought itself a jet, taken staff to Disneyworld, an assigned staff to work on the elections of political candidates.
UNO has 13 schools in Chicago and one in New Orleans. Why the jet, you ask?
UNO received a $98 mlm state grant, considered to be the largest grant of any state. Only about $15 mln is left. Governor Quinn decided to freeeze that account for now and look into cronyism. Someones’s brothers were making millions.
This halted construction on a new UNO school. Ooops.
I heard the CEO of Mosaica owns a Learjet
Care to Google Gulen charters?
How about googling virtual or cyber charters?
Enrollment soars.
K-12 had 39 lobbyists working in as many U.S. states. State legislatures created state charter authorization boards to overrule local school districts.
But academics lag.
Cheating is rampant.
Costs are high.
Services like extracurriculars, sports, clubs, etc. non-existent.
http://us-mg205.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.partner=sbc&.rand=dbe7ba8qs15pf#mail
Granting there have been abuses – no question
There also are some youngsters and families (some of whom I’ve met) who say a cyber charter made a dramatic positive difference. For some, they had been bullied and tried but failed to get the district to deal successfully with it. For others, they really disliked the traditional school structure. For others, there were health problems that prevented regular school attendance, but the cyber structure was better.
We’ve had cyber charters for a long time in Ohio too.
They have an absolutely deplorable record, yet they’re never described as “failing schools” and we increase the funding every year.
I sometimes wonder why reformers don’t point to OH more often, because we’ve had these “innovative solutions” so long, and then I look at the record and I know why they don’t.
My student found a virtual course administered by K-12 to be a useful way to work around schedule conflicts.
Teaching economist, be careful about introducing complexity or nuance here.
TE…Joe wants you to know that teachers aren’t as smart as the two of you. There is a secret club for pompous egoists and Joe is the president. Sign up!
I hunk it was more a comment on the tendency for “some” to become “all” or “none”.
Argh. Think, not hunk.
The issue here isn’t an oline course administered by the school district to accommodate a student. The issue is giving millions of dollars (in some cases hundreds of millions) to unaccountable private contractors whose goal is to make a profit, not to provide an education.
The Walton family (Walmart) owns 30 charter schools in CA. Now do you think their goal is to create an engaged citizen, or a passive consumer? And why should they get our tax dollars to open schools? Nobody voted for that. And why does Eli Broad get to place his handpicked superintendents in public schools all over the country? Nobody voted for him.
Here is Eli Broad’s [Public] School Closure Guide.
Click to access school-closure-guide1.pdf
This was not a course administered by the school district, but one created and staffed by K-12. Without the organization to offer the course, how is the course offered?
With the K-12 created option, my student was able to take the state mandated civics course AND classes in vector calculus, linear algebra, and physical chemistry. Without the K-12 course he would have had to choose between taking the state mandated civics class OR those three other classes. Which was better for his education?
Asked…
“But I defy them to find an example of a public school where the people in charge wrote themselves checks for nearly $2 million”
Answered….
“In less than 55 hours, she would be standing in front of state District Judge Stephen Pfeffer to find out her punishment for embezzling an estimated $3.4 million from the small Jemez Mountain School District. She faced up to life in prison.
…
The state Auditor’s Office launched a special audit and determined that at least 538 blank checks were taken from the district and that those checks were made payable to Borrego and others.”
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/09231923state05-09-10.htm
Corruption and wrong doing happens everywhere. How about the tens of millions stolen and embezzled in the Detroit Public Schools. Even teachers were caught stealing computers from the district.
It sure would be refreshing to hear about those supposed ‘challenging, content-rich core curriculum” you claim to support instead of the constant stream of ad hominem attacks and anecdotal instances of wrong doing. Why not tell us what they look like, where they can be found, and how all schools should offer them. As far as I can tell, more charters seem to offer this than do district schools.
http://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/nation/2012/10/12/a-new-kind-of-elementary-school-rocketship-si-se-puede-academy/1630549/
FLERP! (what does that stand for?) wrote in part, “But I don’t think they’re easy to answer. Do you? Should gifted and talented programs be abolished? Should all zoned schools be abolished because they necessarily exclude some students? What practical effects would a policy like that have on education overall? Or is the principle all that matters?”
No, I would not abolish programs for gifted/talented. But I am impressed with the Howard Gardner’s “Theory of Multiple Intelligence” which suggests the vast majority people are gifted (ie in the top 10%). So I’m in favor of public schools open to all, that help young people develop their own gifts & talents, whether it be painting, music, writing, math, or more applied, “hands-on” skills.
Hank Levin also showed via Accelerated Schools that many youngster did better when offered interesting, complex opportunities instead of worksheets. Joseph Renzulli in Connecticut showed many more youngsters thrived with challenging work.
I would not abolish zoned schools but I’d have more of which Ann Cook and her terrific NYC (district) colleagues did at the Julia Richman complex – offering several schools in one building. We’ve helped people do this even in small rural districts like Int’l Falls Mn. In Forest Lake, Mn there is a Montessori district and a self-contained district elem in the same building. Good idea.
For me, one of the central ideals and ideas of public education is that those schools are open to all, with no admissions tests.
What do you think?
Sorry, I left out one thing re Gardner’s ideas. He says the vast majority of people are gifted in at least one thing – whether painting, music, writing, math, constructive, etc.